In any communication system, the quality and capacity of a communication channel are affected by such factors as interference, allocation of communication resources, the communication schemes or algorithms used on the communication channel, and the particular communication equipment implemented at transmitting and receiving ends of the channel.
The effects of certain factors may be mitigated through efficient resource allocation and selection of communication schemes and equipment. According to some conventional communication techniques, processing operations intended to compensate for other communication channel effects are primarily receiver based. For example, interference cancellation is performed by a receiver in known communication systems. In addition, the implementation of different types of communication equipment in conjunction with the same type of channel, such as different communication terminals in a wireless communication system for instance, may affect received signal processing operations at all receivers.
Communication terminals at the ends of a communication channel are seldom identical. In wireless communication systems, for example, user communication terminals at one end of a communication channel normally have much more limited resources than base stations. In known MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) systems, each receiver has at least as many antennas as a transmitter. This constraint is difficult to satisfy where communication equipment on opposite ends of a communication channel are significantly different, as in the case of wireless communication terminals and base stations in wireless communication systems, for example. In addition, resource limitations at one receiver in such a multi-user system can also affect other receivers in the system.